The Television Thread

[Bedrockbrendan]

Did the mysticism of 2001 turn you off? I thought it was what made it great. Despite its surface rationalism a lot of sf is mystical (Clarke, Dick, Heinlein).

I agree. I love 2001. Visually it is amazing. I can see why it puts some people off. But I think if you read the book by Clarke (or if you are familiar with that concept from his work which he repeats a bit) it makes more sense.

[Omega]

I seriously thought it sucked. But more that that, they changed so much I wonder why they didn't just steal the bits they wanted and make it something new.

The whole "Lets do a sci-fi movie in our street clothes" gag didnt thrill me either. And yeah Its another one of those "We kept the title and a few names." remakes that are getting really old really fast. The Prisoner remake was pretty bad.

[Omega]

Heres a blast from the past.

Finally got to watch a few episodes of the Green Hornet TV series. Was definitely not what was expecting. The series has quite a body count and plays the whole thing very seriously overall. Even when dealing with some of the odder villains.

[Voros]

The whole "Lets do a sci-fi movie in our street clothes" gag didnt thrill me either. And yeah Its another one of those "We kept the title and a few names." remakes that are getting really old really fast. The Prisoner remake was pretty bad.

They remade The Prisoner? As in the classic English series?

[Dumarest]

Heres a blast from the past.

Finally got to watch a few episodes of the Green Hornet TV series. Was definitely not what was expecting. The series has quite a body count and plays the whole thing very seriously overall. Even when dealing with some of the odder villains.

I have it on DVD and it's quite good. Too bad it only lasted one season. They're rerunning it on some cable channel. Even though I have the DVDs I still tape it for some reason and watch that way.

[Spike]

I just got done watching season 2 of Killjoys.  Seems pretty clear to me that between the two seasons (a span of what? Three years? I dunno, I'm too lazy to look it up) they spent a lot of time brainstorming and trying to answer the questions they raised about the setting in season one.

So very tired of crap like that, but I saw that writing on the wall back in season one with all the ad hoc/made it up on the fly bullshit.  Now the unkillable badguys bleed green goo? Eh. At least the recognized the ginger asshole boss figure was the best they could do for the RAC team and brought him back strong for this season with even more fabulous hair than before, and they did quite a bit less dress-up dolly with the lead, though not entirely absent.

What is still lacking is setting building, especially in the 'science' portion of science-fiction.   McGuffin Tech keeps showing up, but the thing about technology is that it is replicable, and if someone out there in the unexplained galaxy of the setting has better technology that shit will spread and be copied. Thats sorta what Technology means (as compared to, say, Magic).  Whatever.  The Green Goo change to teh setting has invalidated about half the macguffins that came before, so who cares, eh?

[Bedrockbrendan]

I started watching Glow for some reason. Actually enjoyed it. Not usually into these kinds of shows (I think the people who did it also wrote stuff like Orange is the New Black which I could never get into). But they do a good job of recreating that time period and the characters are all pretty interesting.

[Omega]

They remade The Prisoner? As in the classic English series?

They did. I recall one UK news review calling it an "atrocity". Which isnt too far off the mark really. Its got the title and a Number 6. And thats about it for the connections to the original. Same with the V remake.

[Voros]

I started watching Glow for some reason. Actually enjoyed it. Not usually into these kinds of shows (I think the people who did it also wrote stuff like Orange is the New Black which I could never get into). But they do a good job of recreating that time period and the characters are all pretty interesting.

Orange is the New Black starts off rough, improves significantly and then goes into decline. It can be very heavy handed and is best when sticking closer to comedy rather than drama. Some excellent actors in the cast lift up the material too. One major flaw is the main character and her romance are the least interesting thing in the show but the rabid fans insist on that relationship, when the show tried to move beyond it they got blowback.

Glow looks cool, I remember the real deal from when I was a kid.

[Spike]

I just started Dark Matter, season 1.  I'm... well, I'm about a minute in, and its rough going.

So... ship floating, empty in the void, life support down, dude wakes up out of cryosleep and runs for what I presume is the bridge.

Then a girl wakes up from cryosleep (I get, btw, that the premise is five amnesiacs out of cryosleep...), follows him the bridge and immediately attacks him, kung fu style.

Guess who wins?

Anyway, life support is restored, dude asks girl why she went all kung fu on him.

Her response?

"You were in the way".

Oh.

God.

If the writing doesn't improve by the end of the first episode I may ritually burn the discs to exorcise the evil of them from this realm.






Yes: I found that so obnoxiously bad that I actually stopped watching, pulled up le internet, just to make a fucking post about it.  I've never wanted a main character to die painfully so very, very quickly into a show before.  I'm having flashbacks to my worst ever D&D experiences, usually at conventions, with strangers.

[Spike]

Ugh. 15 minutes in and the writing is no better.  The ONLY upside is that it really does seem to fit some terrible RPG game.

Let's look at the characters:

One: The Serious Roleplayer. Seems to be pretty much useless, chickenshit, and incompetent at anything related to survival, but might be some sort of bard or scientist type.
Two: The GM's Girlfriend, who almost always has all the answers being fed to her and for no apparent reason gets to be the leader, but also helps keep the plot moving forward (if only to reveal her specialness...)
Three: The Gun Guy. In true 'Hollywood'* fashion, he loves guns, is pretty stupid most of the time, and never, ever kicks any ass.  Hmm.. a bit like D&D 3e fighters, exclipsed by the god damn thief in asskicking!
4: The Wise, silent Kung Fu dude, who naturally shows off his mysterious kung-fu powers against the Serious Roleplayer.  
5: The Kid, who is just there to hang out and scam some doritos, mostly. Won't do much of anything useful, but occasionally the GM will throw this player something interesting to do to keep them involved... and probably they'll wind up handing it off to someone else as quickly as possible
6: Yeah, htere are six. So far I got... he's the utility player? He's clearly the pilot, seems to be at the center of much of the action, but never seems to do much but comment/bounce off the other characters.

And the GMPC/Android/Plot Dispenser: I saw a youtube compilation of her action scenes. The actress seems pretty competent, physically, but her voice is a bit... thready.  The choreography of the action is... typically Kanedan, ergo, weak-fu.




* I believe Dark Matter is from Kaneda.  I've yet to hear a term other than 'Hollywood' for Kanedan cinema.


EDIT:::: Great, the Monk has a puzzle box. Now I'm expecting Pinhead to show up and tear his soul apart. Well, not really expecting, but at least hoping.

EDIT::: OMG!!!! 20 minutes in and Gun Guy has managed to... get this... KICK HIS OWN ASS!!!!   Fuck me, I AM going to enjoy this series... or die of alcohol poisoning, one of the two. Drinking Game TIME!!!!!

EDIT:: 30 minutes in and the GM's GF manages to hit the trifecta of 'look at me, I so sexah', 'you think I'm sexah? Silly boy, I'm giving you orders not seducing you.' and 'everyone to to the planet while I say behind so youse can watch mah ass sway...'.    But that's not why I stopped to post again. No, Utility Player FINALLY asks the android (and of course the GM's GF had to bitchslap Gun Guy with Nerd-fu over the difference between Android and Robot, because Reasons) what their ship's name is. She responds with the ship's class (Phantom Class Marauder, which, admitted sounds like a bad ass ship class... I want one, now...), and like a dumbass (because he's not the GM's GF?) he assumes the Ship is named Marauder.  I'm about to research who wrote this crap and find some Player Characters to assign a quest to hobo-murder them in the face.  On the other hand, I find myself giggling like a schoolgirl ( I do that alot, actually... don't judge me!)  every few minutes over the sheer density of the stupidity.


EDIT::: So, they land somewhere in Eastern Europe (if Hollywood has taught me anything, its to recognize abandoned Warsaw Pact industrial centers!) where they are promptly ambushed by... sweet bloody JEEBUS!!!! Its the Big Bad from Killjoys!   Hallelujah, motherfucker!!!!..... Should have kept the scene rolling for a few more seconds before posting, fake-out re-edit... guess who wants to parlay?  G'wan! Guess!!!    Serious Roleplayer!  DRINK!

EDIT::: Exposition city! Quest handouts! Alien Enforcers for Megacorps that no one has ever survived!!!  Pointless lying from Gun Guy, who totally punks Serious Roleplayer in the Parlay stakes!   Seriously, if I really was drinking every time I saw an RPG session I'd be in an ambulance right fucking now getting my stomach pumped.   That aside... the... ahem... plot being dropped in our laps for the last ten minutes of this episode is...

Miners on the planet have a subsistence level claim. Megacorps in orbit have a big asteroid strike motherlode and need a place to feed/house their workers. Apparently the planet isn't big enough for the grub miners and the Megacorp Mancamp, so the 'Raza', who are those mysterious alien enforcers, are coming to kill the grub miners.

The stupid, it burns. Seriously. Have the writers never left their small fog-shrouded coastal enclave, filled with weird fish-men?   The planet isn't big enough? The Mega-corps don't share? Share what? Real-estate?    The exposition dump explains, clearly and succinctly, that the dirt miners don't have anything the Mega corps want, and the big strike is in orbit, so this is about land for a mancamp (industry term, bitches)?  On a mostly empty planet?  

There better be a fucking twist. It better be epic.

EDIT::: So, we have A twist, sort of, in that the Amnesia Victims apparently are carryign the arms shipment the miners are waiting on to fight the Raza. Not much of a twist, seeing that the ship was originally headed to this world.  The Party wants nothing to do with the quest, but the Serious Roleplayer is using meta-reasoning (of course... they always do, for all their bullshit about immersion) to explain how they were meant to take this quest.

EDIT::: Eh. So I was noting to myself earlier that The Kid reminded me a bit of River Tam in general appearance and vaguely offputting mannerisms, while not being a direct rip-off. Now she's delivering unto the GM's GF dialog about how she just 'sees stuff, like, in her head, y'know?'.   Also, she appears to be the ship's mechanic, which seems fitting for The Kid's Player Type.   Fake=out EDIT two... should hav elet teh scene play out. She's also apparently prone to fits of murderous psychopathy?  River? Issat you?


EDIT:::: "Do we really have to have a vote to decide if she gets a vote?!"



EDIT::: !!!!!!  Epic Twist!!!  The Party ARE the Raza!!  

Ok, so pretty much everything in the exposition dump is still dumb as a box of rocks stacked on a box of hammers, but still. Epic Twist!   Also, I sorta guess that dumb shit about the ship name earlier is, if not forgiven, excusable, since it turns out that Raza is the ship's name, so I guess they needed to hide that.    Now, epic question: Do I continue with episode two? Can my liver take it?

[kosmos1214]

Damn that show sounds so dumb I'ma need to watch it

[Dumarest]

I've been watching The Big Valley reruns on some channel or other. Young Lee Majors! Pretty good so far. Makes me want to play Boot Hill. Anybody else like The Big Valley?

[Voros]

Haven't seen it since I was a kid and they had reruns of old TV westerns like that, Gunsmoke, Bonanza and The Wild Wild West.

[kosmos1214]

I've been watching The Big Valley reruns on some channel or other. Young Lee Majors! Pretty good so far. Makes me want to play Boot Hill. Anybody else like The Big Valley?

Personally I think its one of the better tv westerns made good characters good acting and writing.
Probably it's biggest problem is it came on the seen so late in the tv westerns life span. If it had come on maybe A decade earlier I think there's A good chance it would be remembered in the same vain as gunsmoke.
In hindsight I find it A little odd that Bonanza was As big as it was and The big valley is comparatively forgotten.